ONE CENT! I can remember when a child who actually held a real penny in hand could feel himself to be rich. You could actually buy items with one penny and a combination of them you had saved - augmented by a new nickel or dime from Grandpa meant a kid could go shopping.
The clerk at the grocery store who also was Lord and Master over the glass covered candy counter had to have a great deal of patience when dealing with such customers determined too get the best values in candy with their accumulation of pennies. Each copper cent often represented work time for the youngsters, too The soft drink companies of that same era had a more-or-less standing offer of paying two cents for the return of their bottles for refill. You can believe we each had our favorite places all mapped out for bottle collections.
But times changed as they are still doing.
The penny candies gradually disappeared and we came to live in an era of candy "bars". The usual price for a time, was five cents so the penny still applied quite well except we had to have more of them. most of the names have endured.
"Tootsie Roll" was one of the very first and others I remember were different chocolate treats made by Hershey. "Baby Ruth" (which went through a time of legal problems because most us went right on pronounced the name "Babe" rather than "Baby." Scores of others were available, too, now that I start list a few of them: "Clark'"s, "Mars", "Almond Joy","Snicker's", " Milky Way","Butterfinger", "Three Muskateers", "Cracker Jack" and other such candied concoctions."
Penny Candies have, I suppose, have the way of the Penny Arcade amusement machines. They continue to return from time-to-time in other dress and with different names but not at the same reasonable rate of exchange.
A.L.M. April 8, 2005 [c435wds]
